According to ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, the Minnesota Vikings have been “entertaining” the idea of adding Aaron Rodgers to the team in 2025. It would feel like turning the clock back to 2009, when the Vikings added Brett Favre and advanced to the NFC Championship, losing in heartbreaking fashion to the New Orleans Saints.
Signing Rodgers would push the J.J. McCarthy era back another season. It’s unlikely Rodgers would go to Minnesota to fill the potential Daniel Jones or Nick Mullens role, bridging to McCarthy and spending the rest of the year on the sidelines with a clipboard. Signing Favre in 2009 signaled the Vikings were “all-in” on a Super Bowl run. Adding Rodgers would do the same for 2025.
However, that’s not the only parallel with a potential Rodgers signing. Immediately before the Vikings hired Kevin O’Connell, a dark horse candidate emerged late in their January 2022 head coaching search. Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, who had gone 44-19-1 from 2011 to 2014 with the San Francisco 49ers, had a history with Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. That landed him an interview on Feb. 2, 2022, and Vikings fans were ecstatic.
The Los Angeles Rams had punched their ticket to the Super Bowl a few days before Harbaugh’s interview. O’Connell was L.A.’s offensive coordinator and a finalist for the Vikings job. However, he had little experience calling plays in the league, and being an offensive coordinator under Sean McVay gave the public “What would you say you do here?” vibes.
O’Connell was 36 when he took the interview. The New England Patriots had taken him in the third round of the 2008 draft. He only completed four of six passes for 23 yards as a rookie before bouncing around the league as a backup. The San Diego Chargers cut O’Connell in 2012, and he was a private quarterbacks coach until 2015, when the Cleveland Browns hired him as their quarterbacks coach.
Harbaugh was 58 when the Vikings interviewed him and was also an NFL quarterback. However, he had played at a high level for a long time. Harbaugh had a 15-year career and threw for 26,288 yards and 129 touchdowns. While playing in the NFL, he helped his father as an offensive consultant at Western Kentucky and got his first job as a quarterbacks coach with the Oakland Raiders in 2002.
He turned the University of San Diego’s football program around before going 29-21 with Stanford. The Niners were in the NFC Championship each of his first three years, including a Super Bowl appearance following the 2012 season; his 2021 Michigan team was ranked second when they lost to Georgia in the Orange Bowl.
O’Connell’s resumé paled compared to Harbaugh, who appeared poised to become Minnesota’s next coach in 2022. Everyone knew he was at TCO Performance Center for his interview on Feb. 2, and fans eagerly awaited the announcement that Harbaugh was the Vikings’ next head coach.
However, they hired O’Connell, not Harbaugh, that night. Adofo-Mensah took a chance on an unproven commodity. With youth on his side and learning from one of the league’s best coaches, the Vikings believed they had the next best head coach in football in O’Connell.
Fans initially didn’t welcome the hiring warmly, wondering how the team could hire someone with no head coaching experience over someone with a proven track record like Harbaugh.
But passing on the known commodity, Harbaugh, for a lesser-known commodity with upside, O’Connell, represented one of Adofo-Mensah’s core values in decision-making. He used the same approach when moving on from Kirk Cousins, even without a new quarterback under contract. Adofo-Mensah did it again when he let Sam Darnold leave for Seattle this week after taking the Vikings to the playoffs with a 14-3 record.
Fans have memories of Rodgers torching Minnesota’s secondary seared into their brains. Yet the last time the Vikings faced Rodgers, they pick-six’d him and sealed the game with a last-minute interception. Many quarterbacks struggled against Minnesota in 2024. Still, unlike countless times in the past, Rodgers wasn’t much different from most of his contemporaries. Does that mean he’s that much different than Darnold or an average second-year starter in 2025?
The Vikings drafted McCarthy with the 10th pick in last year’s draft to have him sit behind Darnold in 2024. McCarthy could have potentially unseated Darnold for the starting spot, but only if he earned it and passed specific benchmarks. Minnesota wouldn’t thrust him into the starting lineup just to appease fans.
Well, 2024 is over, which means it’s time for the Vikings to move onto McCarthy. He’s in the second year of his rookie contract and only accounts for a little over $4.96 million in 2025, making him much cheaper than Darnold or Rodgers. That means he will have outplayed his contract if he can even come close to replicating Darnold’s 2024 season.
If McCarthy does that, his contract won’t be affected because the team controls it through the 2028 season. That would give the Vikings a massive Super Bowl window, allowing them to continue to rebuild through free agency, with McCarthy accounting for so little cap space.
Rodgers would likely get a one-year deal in Minnesota, and signing him would signal the Vikings believe they have a Super Bowl-ready roster. But if Rodgers comes up short, even if it’s an NFC Championship appearance, the Vikings will have this conversation again next year. And there would be no promises Rodgers could repeat his performance, just like Favre petered out in 2010.
It’s easy for a Vikings fan to point to the 2009 season as a reason to sign Rodgers. That’s the closest the team has come to a Super Bowl since the 1998 season, and Favre was a significant reason for that.
Yet Favre was available because the Packers moved on from him because Rodgers was ready. The Packers had just reached the 2007 NFC Championship game with Favre at quarterback. Still, they decided it was time to move on to Rodgers, who had spent the past three seasons on the bench behind Favre. Green Bay went 6-10 in 2008, but Rodgers threw for 4,038 yards and 28 touchdowns while leading the fifth-ranked scoring offense in the league.
Although the Vikings reached the NFC Championship in 2009, the Packers finished 11-5 and lost 51-45 to the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC Wild Card game. Rodgers was 28 of 42 passing for 423 yards and four touchdowns, highlighting that it was the right decision to move on from Favre.
In 2010, Favre overstayed his welcome in Minnesota, throwing only 11 touchdowns and 19 interceptions in 13 games. Meanwhile, the Packers, who people second-guessed in 2008 and 2009 for moving on from Favre, won the Super Bowl the following season. Rodgers continued his stellar play the following season, winning NFL MVP and having one of the best decades of quarterback play the league has ever seen.
I’m not saying McCarthy will become Rodgers if he’s Minnesota’s quarterback in 2024. However, signing Rodgers would undo everything the Vikings have built since Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell arrived in 2022. We don’t know if McCarthy can live up to the expectations of a first-round pick in 2025. Still, we also don’t know if Rodgers can live up to the expectations of being Aaron Rodgers in 2025, either.